This App Lets You Swap Lives With a Stranger for 20 Days

Share the most beautiful, interesting parts of your day with a complete stranger… sound crazy or sound cool? If the latter sounds about right, that’s what new app 20 Day Stranger plans to help you do. We aren’t talking in a creepy Chatroulette way — what 20 Day Stranger does is pair two anonymous people to virtually share their lives with each other for 20 days.

Through existing apps like Google Maps and Foursquare, 20 Day Stranger helps users see see how the other half lives — even if that’s halfway around the world. See what breakfast looks like in Austin or what rush hour looks like in Hong Kong. It’s like a cultural exchange, without the expensive plane ticket and trip back to high school to partake in it.

Each users’ identities are kept secret, but where they go and what each do on the daily will be shared with their one partner through the app. Participants can’t send each other direct messages or have access to personal info, but they can send one final message on the last day — to exchange contact information if they do want to get in touch (or to say goodbye if they don’t).

The idea (coming from the cool + smart kids over at The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT) is to establish connection and empathy in a virtual environment, sans TMI status updates or angsty selfies. If you are having brunch, the app will send your partner a Google Street View of your al fresco experience. While you’re biking to work in NYC, you can hang oceanside, thanks to a snapshot of your 2014 pen pal’s locale. Watch your new friend get inked while you’re squeezing and sniffing produce at a local farmers’ market.

The app is still in trial stages, but developers expect it to be available for download within a few months. If you want to be a part of the software trial runs, head over to 20DayStranger.com to sign up!

What do you think? Is this crazy cool or kinda creepy? Tell us in the comments!